Month: January 2009

Even in hospitals, the same clean can be achieved without the harsh and dangerous chemicals (Photo courtesy of the National Institutes of Health)

You might have noticed some
new choices for environmentally-friendly
cleaners on supermarket shelves. Most
people pass them over. They worry
natural cleaners won’t do the job as
well as the regular stuff. But, the
places that need to be the cleanest,
the most sterilized, are finding that
green cleaners are more effective.
Julie Grant reports that hospitals
have started replacing the old chemical
cleaners with natural products:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/feature_grant_011209.mp3

Transcript

You might have noticed some
new choices for environmentally-friendly
cleaners on supermarket shelves. Most
people pass them over. They worry
natural cleaners won’t do the job as
well as the regular stuff. But, the
places that need to be the cleanest,
the most sterilized, are finding that
green cleaners are more effective.
Julie Grant reports that hospitals
have started replacing the old chemical
cleaners with natural products:

It used to stink whenever the cleaning guys at the Cleveland
Clinic needed to strip the floors. The patients, doctors and
nurses would complain about the chemical vapors. So, they
started clearing areas of the hospital on floor cleaning days.

(sound of cleaning machine)

Today Dennis Casey says they drive around on a new
scrubbing machine.

“That’s an automatic stripper, it’s called an orbital scrubber.
And it strips the floors without the use of chemicals – only
water.”

The new-fangled machine looks kind of like a riding mower.
They run over the hospital floors spraying cold water and the
machine scrubs. Casey says it works just as well as the old
chemicals – but it doesn’t smell and takes a lot less time.

That’s music to Christina Ayers’s ears. She’s environmental
coordinator at the Cleveland Clinic. Ayers says the most
important part of picking cleaners and tools – is to make sure
they’re going to work.

“EPA actually certifies disinfectants, and all products that are
used as a disinfectant have to go through the same rigorous
testing to ensure their efficacy. But what we’re buying when
we’re buying the products is the efficacy of the product, not
all the additional chemicals and perfumes and other
elements that are not necessary for the product to function
well.”

Ayers says lots of people are used to that ‘hospital smell.’
But that’s often just a cocktail of cleaning chemicals – and
doesn’t create the healthiest environment for patients and
staff.

They still use bleach at the Clinic – it’s a great disinfectant –
but only in specific places – door handles and other high
traffic areas. Ayers says other places, like windows and
bathrooms, can get just as clean without other harsh
chemicals.

At first, it was tough for some folks on the cleaning staff to
accept the new, fragrance free products. Those strong
smells signaled a clean room. Ayers says some would use
the natural cleaners – but then spray chemical air fresheners
just to make sure the rooms smelled clean.

“That’s a bridge we have to cross. We have to help people
understand that clean smells of nothing. And that when
you’re smelling all of those smells that are associated with
clean, that chemical smell, the smell of bleach, those
perfumes, all those volatile organic compounds that come
out of the cleaning products – you don’t want to be inhaling
all of that product. You really want it to be working, you want
to purchase the efficacy of the product and not all of that
extra stuff that goes into our air.”

Ayers says people with asthma and other breathing
problems understand that right away. And, often, others just
need a little explanation.

“And once you explain that to people – that you’re using a
product that’s safer for the indoor air quality of our hospital –
It’s an easy step, people understand it. And they quickly
grow accustomed to the new smell of clean, which is a much
more mild and fresh and less chemical smell than what you
might be familiar with – even in your own home.”

In fact, I talked with one woman on the cleaning staff who
says, since the hospital switched to more natural products,
she’s seen how well they work and has started using green
cleaners at home.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

The nuclear power plant in Braidwood, Illinois,
was started up just after the state banned new
nuclear power construction. For its entire history,
it's been operating without a permanent home for
its spent nuclear fuel. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

There’s been plenty of buzz
about dozens of proposed nuclear power
reactors in the US. Well, Wall Street’s
financial mess is making power companies
scramble to find all the investment money
for them. But, in twelve states, it won’t
matter whether power companies have cash
in hand or not; it’s illegal to build new
nuclear power plants there. Shawn Allee
reports there are efforts to repeal some
of those bans:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/feature_allee_011209.mp3

Transcript

There’s been plenty of buzz
about dozens of proposed nuclear power
reactors in the US. Well, Wall Street’s
financial mess is making power companies
scramble to find all the investment money
for them. But, in twelve states, it won’t
matter whether power companies have cash
in hand or not; it’s illegal to build new
nuclear power plants there. Shawn Allee
reports there are efforts to repeal some
of those bans:

JoAnn Osmand represents a state legislative district in northeastern Illinois.

Nuclear power is close to her heart – there’s an old, dormant nuclear power plant in her
district. Osmond thought, maybe that plant could be useful again. So, she sat down with
the plant owner.

”And I asked a question: ‘Why are you not taking some of the parts away and
putting them in other nuclear locations?’ They said, ‘there’s a moratorium, we’re
not building any more nuclear plants in the state of Illinois.’”

Osmond was stunned.

Illinois has six existing nuclear power plants – she didn’t know it’s illegal to build more.
She hears plenty of gripes about energy prices – so she thought, why leave nuclear energy
off the table?

“I don’t want my granddaughters to have to buy their electricity from another state.
I want to be able in 2020, 2030 to be able to plug in our electric cars.”

Osmond’s bill to lift the moratorium stalled – it’s still illegal to build nuclear power
plants in Illinois. California and Wisconsin recently had similar fights over their nuclear
moratoria.

Some veterans of nuclear politics are shocked anyone would want to life a ban on nuclear
power plants.

“It makes absolutely no logical, rational sense in any mode of analysis.”

I find Dave Kraft at a coffee shop. Kraft is with the Nuclear Energy Information Service,
a group that’s worked against nuclear power for almost thirty years.

Twelve states severely restrict or ban new nuclear power plants. Kraft says seven have
language almost identical to Illinios’.

“The moratorium simply said, no more new construction of nuclear reactors until
the federal government has a demonstrated means of dealing with the waste
permanently.”

Kraft says states tried protecting themselves from becoming dumps for the most
dangerous nuclear waste – the radioactive spent fuel.

The federal government is supposed to store spent fuel – maybe in Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. But so far, that hasn’t happened, so it’s piling up in nuclear power plants – like
this one in Braidwood, Illinois, southwest of Chicago.

(sound of a door)

Bryan Hanson manages the Braidwood power plant. He leads me to a square storage
pool. It has the bluest water I’ve ever seen.

Hanson: “This is where we store our spent fuel. It’s about thirty feet of water
between us and the top of the fuel bundles down there. So you’re looking at thirty of
water and another twelve feet down below.”

Allee: “If you look into it, it’s almost like honeycomb.”

Hanson: “Honeycomb … looks like an egg crate or honeycomb. Within those cells
are fuel bundles that have been used in the reactor, generated energy, and now
they’re waiting for eventual disposal.”

Braidwood’s pool was meant for short-term storage, but spent fuel’s been stored here for
nineteen years. Hanson says the company is planning for when spent fuel will have to be
stored on-site, but outdoors, perhaps for decades.

It’s a situation the nuclear industry’s is unhappy about, but it’s confident the federal
government will come up with a solution – some day.

So, most power companies support removing bans on new plants. This drives critics like
Dave Kraft crazy.

“To build more reactors at a time when we have no place to put the waste makes no
sense at all. The first rule of waste management is, stop producing.”

Even though Kraft says it doesn’t make sense to lift bans on nuclear power plant
construction, he predicts those bans will get challenged again soon.

Transcript

Lots of supermarkets encourage shoppers to carry re-usable bags for their groceries – by selling those cheap canvas sacks. The idea is to reduce the use of plastic bags. Some states are making sure those plastic bags still used are recycled. Julie Grant reports:

New York has just joined California as only the second state to mandate stores to collect and recycle plastic bags.

Americans use over 80 billion plastic bags a year. They’re usually made with oil. New York leaders are also concerned that the plastic litters streets and parks, waterways, and landfills. People usually throw bags out after one use. But the plastic can take a thousand years to decompose.

Under the new state law, large stores and retail or grocery store chains will have to provide bins for collection of used carry out bags. The stores will have to recycle the returned bags and keep records for three years.

Plastic bag makers are actually glad states are starting to mandate recycling. They say it will reduce the glut of bags – and provide plastic for things such as weather resistant lumber products.

Transcript

Concerns about climate change and energy have lead to new alternative energy sources. But some of them have their own problems. Lester Graham reports a researcher has raised a new concern about wind turbines:

Environmentalists are already worried about the turbines wrecking scenic views, the spinning blades killing birds, and making noise.

Add another concern. Big windfarms can change the local climate. Somnath Baidya Roy is an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois. He says the turbines cause wind turbulence.

“This mixing leads to a .2 degree warming and some increasing evapotranspiration and some reduction in humidity.”

That could be a problem for areas that are already hot and dry like crop fields in places like Texas or Oklahoma.

“On the other hand, if you are in, for example, Nebraska, that warming would imply a slightly longer growing season which is obviously going to be helpful to the farmers.”

Baidya Roy says engineers should be aware of the wind turbine impacts on the nearby climate.

Transcript

As a lot of people think about escaping to someplace warmer, one environmental group wants people to think about greenhouse gases. Lester Graham reports the impact is different depending on whether you choose plane, train or automobile:

The Union of Concerned Scientists has put together a summary of “traveling green” choices.

The group found the best option is a touring bus. The greenhouse gases emitted per passenger are about 15 percent of the amount of one person in a car.

Amtrak, about 50 percent of the carbon footprint of a car.

Jim Kliesch is a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says sometimes even flying is better than a car.

“For solo and couples traveling, flying can actually be a fairly decent option when it comes to carbon footprint. However passengers should be sure to fly coach and to fly direct.”

And if you’ve got four passengers… a car can be an option. But if you’ve got a gas guzzler in your garage, the group suggests you rent a fuel efficient car for your trip.

Transcript

If you’ve ever lived in the south, or even just gone for a visit, you
know kudzu. It’s an invasive weed that grows like crazy in the southern states. Rebecca Williams reports on a new use for the weed:

Kudzu grows about a foot a day.

“And it covers trees, fences, houses – it’ll cover you if you stand still too long.”

That’s Doug Mizell. He says he can run everything from cars to lawnmowers on his kudzunol. It’s a fuel-grade ethanol made from kudzu. He says he got sick of fighting kudzu and decided to figure out how to use it.

“And I thought well, I’m just gonna sit down and make myself a tabletop still and see if I can’t extract some sugars from this stuff and see if I can make some moonshine. And sure enough I was able to do that and the idea of kudzunol kinda grew from that.”

He says kudzunol smells like gin. Right now he’s working on getting patents – and money – to build a commercial plant to make it. He says with those things in place… he’s hoping to sell kudzunol as soon as six months from now.

Transcript

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:

Rochelle Breitenbach and Mary Bajcz are trudging through the snow,
winding their way through a thicket to find a small creek. It’s 14
degrees above zero. And they plan to go wading. They’re lugging in a
fine-mesh net, some hip boots, and an orange 5 gallon bucket of trays and
specimen jars.

Breitenbach says they’re headed for a pristine creek that eventually
becomes a river, the Huron River in southeast Michigan:

“One thing about this spot is that it’s really close to the headwaters
of the Huron River. So, it’s a really good indicator of what they’re
going to find downstream too. This has traditionally been one of the
best spots to collect in the entire watershed.”

They’re just one team of many that take samples up and down the river.
They’re looking for a certain kind of bug, stonefly larvae. Stoneflies
are good fish food and they are very susceptible to pollution. They’re
considered an indicator species. If stoneflies are there and healthy,
it’s a good indication the stream is healthy:

“Their food source is on decomposing leaves, so that’s
where you find them. And then, I will get some of the leaf packs in
the net and then I’ll dump it in the tray. And then we’ll add a little
warm water so they don’t freeze. And then we’ll sort through the leaf
packs and then look for stoneflies.”

Breitenbach cautiously makes her way down the bank, across the ice and
into the water.

She’s taking her first sample in this open water. Bajcz steps out onto
the ice, holding a plastic tray so Breitenbach can empty the net’s contents
into the plastic tray. But… the ice can’t take the weight.

Luckily Bajcz did not fall into the water. In these temperatures, that
would have been bad. They scramble up the snowy bank and start
sorting through the debris in the trays to find stonefly larvae.

Stoneflies have two tails. Mayflies have three tails. So, they’re
squinting to see what they’ve got:

Mary: “Oh, there’s one! Right there. Right, Rochelle? That one?”

Rochelle: “I left my glasses in the car.”

Mary: “Okay. I’m going to collect it. I think it is.”

Rochelle: Yes, go ahead and take it.”

Mary: “Oh look! That’s a mayfly. Three.”

Rochelle: “Yeah, see all the tails.”

Mary: “Look at that one! That’s two. That’s got two. See?”

Rochelle: “Yep.”

Mary: “Wow. (whisper) That’s gigantic.”

Rochelle: “That’s why we love this site (laughs).”

Once they find one, they drop the bug into a jar of alcohol. After the
thrill of finding the stoneflies, they hate to kill them, but they have
to preserve the samples for biologists.

Rochelle: “The whole jar goes back and Jo goes through and identifies
everything.”

Jo is Jo Latimore. She’s the Huron River Watershed Council’s
ecologist. She says without the volunteers’ efforts all along the
river, they’d never be able to monitor this river system as well, but
there are drawbacks to using volunteers.

“The first impression is that volunteer data may not be as trustworthy
as anyone else’s, any trained professional’s data. But, our volunteers
have been trained and then we also do quality control checks, just like
the government would do with their agencies where we’ll go out side-by-
side and send professionals out with the volunteers and compare their
results to make sure that they’re trustworthy.”

Latimore says the end result of volunteer surveys like this one is a
steady monitoring program that fills in the blanks left by government
agencies that can’t do the work.

“The agencies that do have the responsibility for checking the quality
of our waterbodies really have very limited budgets, very limited
staff. For example, in Michigan, the professional biologist from the
DEQ can only get to a particular watershed every five years. And to
really be able to stay on top of the conditions in a stream, you need
to monitor more often than that.”

Voluntary watershed organizations all across the nation assist government agencies in
monitoring the streams and lakes. But in many parts of the nation,
there are no volunteer agencies. The water quality is rarely checked,
and the only time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when there’s a
huge fish kill or other pollution problems that get the attention of
people who live nearby or people who fish the streams. And nearly
everyone agrees that’s not a very good way to keep water clean.

Transcript

Sometimes cities can seem like drab, impersonal places. But, every once in a
while, you see a building that stops you in your tracks. Karen Kelly tells a story
about a house designed to do just that:

(sound of construction and trucks)

When you first see it, you’re just not sure.

A two-story house is being covered with marks etched in concrete.

Is it intentional? Or just a layer of construction?

Then you see a large black figure on the west side of the house and realize- oh, it’s
a whale. Waves are etched in the concrete around it. Walk around the corner and
you see flocks of birds flying over roughly drawn buildings.

(sound of scraping)

And just past the birds, there are three men working silently on a platform. Two
are spreading layers of fresh concrete.

The third is artist Christopher Griffin, the owner of the house. He uses a long
smooth bone to draw a picture after each swipe of the trowel – and before the
concrete sets.

He says he has to work fast.

“They would scrape the mud on and I would be going around them, over top of
them, actually right behind their trowel and there’s no chance to stand back; there’s
no chance to second guess.”

Griffin has been a professional artist in Ottawa, Canada for almost twenty years.

Griffin’s motivation was simple: his house really needed a new exterior. But the
regular stuff that people put on their houses didn’t feel right to him.

Instead, he thought he’d try some drawings like he’d seen in a photo of mud huts in
Africa.

“It was irregular; it was organic; it wasn’t pristine; it wasn’t crisp; it wasn’t
heartless. And that sort of quality was something I was after.”

(sound of chatting and scraping)

But while Griffin had this vision of giant sunflowers and caribou, contractors had
no idea what he was talking about.

Several told him it couldn’t be done.

Dan Charette is part of a team that was willing to give it a try.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity to bring our craftsmanship to a different level. There’s
a whole other creative level to what we do here with constructive behaviors, so it’s
really a lot of fun.”

For instance, the contractors suggested adding fly ash to the cement. It’s a
byproduct of burning coal and it also makes the cement more elastic.

Griffin liked that it was more environmentally friendly.

He also recycled building materials and added solar panels. But usually that’s not
what people see.

He says what really makes him feel good is when people just stop and stare.

“Absolute strangers stopping their cars, getting out and having a look. There’s a
teenage skateboarder who stopped and said, ‘Wow, awesome house.’”

Griffin says, in that way, his house has become a public space.

In fact, he argues everyone’s house is a public space.

And he suggests people think about what they want their house to say to someone
walking by.

Transcript

The state of Florida is working on a plan to restore water flow to its troubled Everglades. It wants to
buy a huge sugar grower and the land it owns between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades. Ann
Dornfeld went out on the lake to find out what’s at stake:

The first thing to know about Lake Okeechobee is that it’s not your stereotypical clear blue lake. It’s
shallow, murky, covered with tall grasses, and thick with everything from birds and rabbits to frogs
and alligators.

The lake is about 35 miles wide. It’s known as the ‘liquid heart’ of the Everglades. And Paul Gray is
here to take its pulse.

It’s his first time out on the lake since the last big storm, and he’s eager to see how it’s doing.
Stormwater is diverted into the lake from development and farmland like the U.S. Sugar fields. That
floods the lake, which has nowhere to drain because it’s surrounded by a dike.

The best way to get to the middle of a marshy lake is an airboat.

(sound of airboat starting up)

As the boat zips across the grassy lake on a cushion of air, brightly-colored bugs and tiny green frogs
the size of your thumbnail land inside.

Once we skid to a halt, Paul Gray scans the water, and throws up his hands, disappointed.

“We’ve stopped in an area that’s probably four feet deep now. This is very, very sparse – just a little
stem sticking up every four to five feet. If everything was working right this would be all vegetated,
full of birds and stuff. Right now I’m not sure what will happen to it. [sighs] It’s a little demoralizing
right here, but we’ll look for some better spots.”

All this vegetation drowned in the last big storm.

“All of Okeechobee’s water used to flow into the Everglades, but now it doesn’t do that anymore.”

Instead, extra water is dumped into the fragile estuaries. They’re supposed to be a delicate mix of
saltwater and freshwater. And dumping all that lake water into them destroys the ecosystem.

“And the great tragedy is in 2004-2005 we had so many storms, and we dumped so much water
from Lake Okeechobee that we could’ve met all our water needs for a decade. The year after dumping
all that water out, we were in a severe drought and the farmers were only getting 45% of the water
they wanted.”

Last summer, the state of Florida announced a tentative deal with U.S. Sugar Corporation to buy the
company out. U.S. Sugar’s land blocks the flowaway between the lake and the Everglades. The state
proposes returning some of the land to its natural marshy state, and using other parts for stormwater
reservoirs. Gray says the U.S. Sugar deal would be a huge boon to the lake and the Everglades. It
could even improve the birdlife in northern states and Canada that fly south for winter.

“When those little warblers and things reach Florida, they’ve gotta get fat. They need to double their
body weight before they fly across the Gulf of Mexico, or they can’t make it!”

We arrive at a shallower part of the lake, and Gray pumps his fist in victory.

“This is much better news. We’re sitting in a big patch of green plants with little white and pink
flowers. It goes on for several hundred yards. This is called smart weed. It produces little very hard
black seeds. And ducks love these seeds, and migratory seed-eating birds like sparrows and other
things love these seeds. When all of the wintering waterfowl get down here they’re gonna have a ball
with this! [laughs] Wow. That’s nice. Alright, we can go.”

It’s a small success. But Gray says until the flow of water into Lake Okeechobee is returned to normal,
the liquid heart of the Everglades will be struggling to beat.

Transcript

It’s been decades, but there are now more California Condors in the wild than there
are in captivity. That’s thanks to two condor chicks who recently left their nests in
the Grand Canyon. As Sadie Babits reports, biologists are thrilled, but one of the
problems that caused the decline in condors still exists:

At the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, there’s a wood fence that
protects the California Condors that live behind it.

“Just lately in order to minimize the exposure of our adult breeding pairs to humans,
we’ve built this security fence or actually it’s a visual barrier, we call it.”

That’s Bill Heinrich. He overseas the California Condor Recovery program at the
Center.

There is this one small break in the fence – a part that hasn’t been built yet. And
behind some chain link, I can see some very large birds…

Sadie: “Is that a Condor right there??”

Bill: “Yeah… you can see an adult condor standing, a pair of them on a perch.”

Sadie: “Ooohhhh!”

Bill: “You can kind of get an idea of just how big they really are.

Sadie: “They’re huge!”

Bill: “They weigh anywhere from 18-25 pounds and have close to a 10 foot wingspan.”

In the early 1980s the California Condors almost went the way of the Dodo –
extinct. Only 22 of these birds remained in the wild.

The big birds were killed by hunters. They died from lead poisoning after eating
animals killed with lead bullets. And their own genetic makeup didn’t help much
either.

These birds, shall we say, have a low sex drive. Rather than produce chicks every
year and gamble that they’ll survive, condors lay one egg every other year. That
hasn’t worked so well.

So biologists thought they’d help. They started capturing the endangered condors to
begin a captive breeding program. In 1987, the last wild bird was caught.

Bill Heinrich recalls there was plenty of controversy over that decision.

“People thought well you should let them go extinct with dignity or you can try to
breed them in captivity but you might fail and then you would have lost them in the
wild that much quicker.”

But the move saved the birds from being killed by hunters or from eventual lead
poisoning.

And, the breeding program, well, let’s just say the numbers speak for themselves.
Down to 22 birds in 1987, today there are now 327 California Condors. And more
than half of those birds are back in the wild.

Bill Heinrich says next spring some of these condors will be released some where
around the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

That’s where the birds will once again be exposed to one of the factors that lead to
their decline. It’s not hunters these days. The birds are protected by the Endangered
Species Act. But lead poisoning. Condors feed on gut piles and carcasses left by
hunters. If a hunter uses lead bullets, the bullet will explode sending tiny fragments
of lead through the meat. It’s enough to make a condor sick. Heinrich says lead
poisoning remains the single biggest threat to the birds.

“You know if hadn’t been for the lead issue coming up, I would have thought, I
didn’t have any reservations about it being successful until the lead problem cropped
up.”

Every year, biologists have to test the birds for lead poisoning. They’ve been working
with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to hand out free non-lead bullets to
hunters in the area. Last year, not a single condor died from lead poisoning. This
year, biologists have had to treat six birds, all of which are expected to make a full
recovery.

In California, the state has banned lead ammunition because of the lead poisoning
concern. But hunters don’t think lead bullets are a real problem, and they really
don’t want to pay for different kinds of bullets because that is a lot more expensive.